Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Sibling Fights: A Script

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

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Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com slash kirk. Visit ixl.com slash kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. So the kids are at it again, squabbling with each other, picking on each other, that endless back and forth, hitting, touching, just looking at each other in a funny way. And you've seen and heard this movie unfold a thousand times in your home. And that's just this week, right? One provokes, the other reacts. There's harsh words, there's tears, or just that never-ending back and forth of meaningless taunts and reprisals over literally nothing. That's not fair. I'm telling

mom, why does he get that? You're a butthead. Whatever it is that irritates you, that's what they're going to say. So what do you do? That's what we're going to talk about today on the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I'm glad you're here. If we can help you in any way, let us know. Reach out to us. You're going to talk to our son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com.

Find all of our stuff and interesting blogs, all of the podcasts at CelebrateCalm.com. So let us know if we can help you because that's what we live for. I want to address some sibling issues because I got a lot of emails this past week. People have downloaded the Christmas in July special. And one of the things that one of the 12 programs is one on sibling fights. There's one on screens and people are struggling with that this summer. And so I got this one great email I loved was from a mom who used some of our language because we like to give scripts to use and all of our programs. We like to give you an actual script. What do you say? And so mom, kids were fighting and she came in, sat down on the floor and just said, guys, I expect you to figure this out yourselves. But if you don't do that, I will happily become the dictator and I will control everything that you do for the rest of the day. Choice is up to you. And then she walked away because what she's

determined is, I'm not the referee. And moms, dads, I want to free you from being the referee in your home, from micromanaging your kids and their interactions. There are times where you have to step in physically because we don't want a child, kids getting hurt. But there are other times where I want you to be able to look at your kids and tell them, this is yours to figure out. This is not my problem. You two learn how to deal with this. Because if they don't learn how to deal with it when they're kids, they will grow up and probably have a marriage like yours in which you have two adults who don't talk about the

hard issues, who bury everything, and then find out 15 years later that it's not working because you buried all of your resentments and you couldn't have a hard conversation and you didn't know how to problem solve. And I'm not making light of that. That's what happens in most of our homes and our marriages. And this is an opportunity to teach our kids. So there's a ton to sibling fights. They usually come from one of two places. There's boredom. If I get bored, I'm going to pick on my brother. Why? Stimulate my brain. And then there's usually there's jealousy because you have a strong-willed child who feels like the bad kid, like everyone is against him. And then you have the good compliant child that everybody loves. And that child who's always in trouble,

your strong-willed child is probably going to feel resentful and jealous, and he will go after the good child. And that has happened since the beginning of jealous, and he will go after the good child. And that has happened since the beginning of time, and it has never ended. And the real antidote, by the way, to that is not to separate them. It's not discipline. It is, in that situation, if you build your strong-willed child's confidence and use his brain in the right way, he will no longer feel the need to pick on

that other brother as much, right? I want you to know if we're looking at screen issues, it's not just a matter of saying no. Saying no is fine. Consequences are fine. But until you get to the root of the issue, nothing changes. And that's what we try to teach you so that these things don't happen again and again and again, right? Because I always like to tell dads, like, if your my way or the highway approach and your tough discipline was going to work, it would have worked already and you wouldn't be listening to the Calm Parenting podcast, right? It's because you're not getting to the root of the issue. And that's what we want to get to, right? So rewind the scene, right?

You're cooking dinner, you're doing whatever, and you hear the kids squabbling. And it just irritates you. Look, because you love your children and you so want them to love each other, to respect each other, to share with each other, and just enjoy getting along, it's irritating because they pick at each other nonstop. Sometimes they say really mean things to each other, and they often just squabble over everything, and they fight. It doesn't matter where they are. They fight. You can be out having a fun day doing something they asked you to do, and they'll turn it into and make it something miserable, getting on each other's nerves. Right. But in this situation right there, at it again in the living room, you're trying to cook dinner.

You're trying to have maybe that rare conversation with your spouse or just enjoying a peaceful moment. But you hear them escalating in the other room. There's drama and the emotional fire is growing. So you slam down your spatula in frustration and you march into the living room. And here's where this whole scene either explodes in chaos and yelling or turns into an amazing opportunity to problem solve. But a lot of it, so much of it depends on how you respond to the sibling fight. And that's why we always bring it back to you have so much power in these situations, not by controlling other people, but by controlling yourself. See, there's already a lot of drama in

the room. And each child is playing his part because one of your kids is the provoker and he is intentionally provoking the other. And his brother falls prey to his taunts, choosing to react and escalate the situation even more, right? Because that's his part. He's the reactor. And it's like this highly choreographed dance they've perfected. And now you are about to add even more drama to the entire scene. And that's your drama because you're about to make this all about you

and your anxiety. Maybe it's about your guilt over feeling like a bad mom or dad because your kids aren't grateful and can't get along. Maybe it's about your frustration because you're simply exhausted and partly because you do way too much for your kids. Stop doing that. And you just want one peaceful night without having to repeat the same things over and over and over and over again. So you lecture and plead. Why can't you two just get along? Is that too much to ask? You have this great home and great life and there are kids starving and you two are siblings. You should be best friends and care for each other. Why can't you ever just be nice to each other? And you don't even wait for a response because now you've worked yourself from frustration to

anger. So you just bark out, Alex, get to your room right now. Ben, you go to your room. And if I hear so much as a peep from either of you, so help me. Right? And now you've separated them and it's quiet. Finally. Well, at least for a few minutes until you call them both for dinner and it starts up again. Or until one somehow crawls through the air conditioning ducts into his brother's room to begin again. And the scene happens every day in millions of homes. And although we get the kids to shut up for a little while, we've missed a huge opportunity. An opportunity to teach them how to handle conflict. Probably something you and your spouse struggle with.

True. Something, by the way, if you need help with the marriage issues, which I'm sure you do because nobody prepares us for this, do look on CelebrateCalm.com. Look under the Christmas in July special. You look, you pull down the tabs, you can just get the marriage program alone. If you get the Get Everything package, can just get the marriage program alone. If you get

everything packaged, it's included in that for free. Just go ahead and look on there. By the way, do look at the Christmas in July special. It is cheaper than our actual Christmas special was last year because we know families are struggling with being inside all the time and with COVID and every other struggle. And if we can help you, let us know. That's what we're here for. So you're going to struggle with all of this, right? And we miss the opportunity because what I want is for you to stop being the referee and we want to teach the kids how to control themselves. So a couple things before we learn a different way, because I want to liberate your children from your pressure. One, kids are supposed to fight and get on each other's nerves.

It's happened since the beginning of time. It is just the way that it works, okay? So don't worry about that. It's very, very normal. It doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong or you're a bad mom. It may be that you didn't have a brother or sister, so you don't know what to expect. But just read through history and you will find that kids have fought with each other for thousands of years. Number two, it is not your job to make your kids happy.

And you need to reconcile that within yourself. It is not your job to make sure your kids get along. It's not your job to separate sure your kids get along. It's not your job to separate them every time they squabble. It is your job to teach them how to be responsible for themselves. Because once you begin to step back from all of this pressure that you place on yourself and on your kids, they will begin to step up and they will begin to get along better, right? It's really, really important. So imagine the scene unfolding a different way. You hear the squabbling and it irritates you. It triggers you. That's normal. It should frustrate you. You're not wrong for feeling

that anxiety and that frustration. I just don't want you to react to it. So you sigh, you look up to the heavens for some kind of strength to not whack both of those kids with that spatula, right? The way your mom and mine did a few times. And you may even have to put the stove on simmer or just let dinner be ruined. In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter. And I'm trying to be very realistic with this. So you take a couple deep breaths, You look around the kitchen for a prop. You grab the Uno cards or a book. You walk into the living room as if you don't have a care in the world and you sit on the floor, secretly adopting your favorite calming

pose. You begin reading your book or dealing the cards while your kids continue squabbling. You don't even look at them. You're sitting on the floor, casually reading, dealing cards are out. And within seconds, I guarantee they're going to stop because you're going to look at you like you're crazy because they were waiting, just waiting for you to come barging into the living room, lecturing and yelling. Because watch, this is important. They know that you are an essential part of their dance. See, both kids play their roles equally. One's the provoker.

He needs intense brain stimulation, so he pushes everyone's buttons. When people react to him and he gets under their skin, it fires that little brain and it feels good. It's a very negative way to meet that need for brain stimulation, but it works. And when you enter the room and add your own intensity and drama, now he's getting a double dose of brain stimulation. First, he provoked his brother. Now he gets to try to use that amazing brain to weasel his way out of consequences by arguing with you and creating some elaborate story to convince you that he didn't do anything. See how that works? And then if your spouse gets upset, now he's upset three people and he didn't even have to do anything but look at his brother

once. Now the other sibling, oh he's no helpless victim. Now, caveat, sometimes kids are being victimized in the home, and they need to be protected. And that's a separate situation, which we go through in the programs. But that's not for this one. He's playing his part perfectly. He loves being the victim, the oppressed, right? Maybe he likes to imagine himself as that perfect, well-behaved brother who never does anything wrong, but just everybody picks on him. But he doesn't have a lot of confidence and he lacks the self-respect necessary to refuse to take the bait from his brother. And so he reacts every time, watch how this works, to reinforce the narrative in his brain that he's a helpless victim who's done nothing wrong. And he's just

waiting for you to come into the room to validate that narrative and his status as the victim. And when you yell at the provoker, just leave your brother alone. The reacting child feels satisfied inside. It's a really nasty little dance. And you know what he's thinking inside? Mom, you're right. It's all his fault. I didn't have a choice in this matter. Right? Can you see what's happening here? You're just a pawn in their never ending game to get their needs met. And you play that role beautifully. Come in, bring your own drama, reinforce what they each want deep down inside. I really want you to step back and think about this because this relates to every other thing that's going in your home. You have to step back and realize we've got to get to the root of

the issue. And by reacting all the time as parents, we just reinforce things, right? The negative things. That's why none of these situations change. And that's why consequences don't work. Because the provoker doesn't care that he got sent to his room. He doesn't care about consequences. Who cares? He got what he wanted. The challenge of provoking his brother and the challenge of taking you on to argue his point and manipulate you. And he's just going to ignore most of your consequences anyway. He's sitting all full of himself, self-satisfied in his room, having just ruined the afternoon for his brother and you.

And I don't mean that he's intentionally just a jerk and doesn't care about you. It's just that he needs and craves that kind of intensity. And the quickest way to get it is to create chaos. And everybody else has played their role. The other brother is sitting alone in his room feeling sorry for himself, upset because he actually does care about consequences, and doesn't think he deserves the same punishment as his brother since he, quote, didn't do anything because he never does anything wrong. Now here he is, sullen and resentful and complaining that life is unfair. And this situation will never change

until you control the only person in this scene that you can control yourself. And you've got complete power over that. You can change this dynamic and begin to teach important life lessons your kids need. Because if you don't teach the provoker how to get brain stimulation in healthy ways, he will grow up to be an impulsive job hopper who unknowingly creates the same drama in all of his relationships with his future wife, future employers, and with his own kids. And the other child may grow up to be a lot like you or your spouse, one of whom is probably the resentful, exhausted, helpless victim. I'm not making light of that. It's the dynamic. It's how it happens.

We all have our roles to play. You just have an opportunity to teach your kids this now so they don't have to learn it in therapy 30 years from now like you and I have to do probably in the midst of a strained marriage. And I'm not being taking light of that. It's very serious and you know that's true. So there are a lot of different ways to handle this. If you get the program, download it, listen to the programs, give it to your spouse, give these programs, share them with your family members, let your kids. Look, one of my favorite things to do is if you've got siblings, I would have them over the summer listen to this program.

Listen to the sibling one because I want them to ultimately be responsible for themselves. And there are a lot of different ways to handle this. One of the responses is to teach your kids the provoking child, what's going on in his brain, so he actually understands why he's getting in trouble by provoking his child, what he can do differently to stimulate his brain in a positive way. It is also important for you to teach the child who reacts that if he doesn't learn how to control himself and stop reacting to irritating people in situations, that he's going to be miserable in life, right? And this is an opportunity in this situation to teach them how to do that.

What are you going to do the next time your brother irritates you? And we'll show you how to do that so that you can teach them so he has some tools to deal with an irritating brother. But that's not what I wanted to deal with in this podcast. I wanted to show you a slightly different way to handle this. See, I actually want you to be ruthless in expecting your children to be responsible for themselves. Now, if you've got a three-year-old, four-year-old, you're going to have to role play, and you're going to have to show them a different way to do this, right? But I want you to begin

from an early age, right? With a whining and tattling on each other. Oh, we have great responses for that. They put it back in the child's court, right? So here's one script, one way, and you can't say, you won't say all of this, but I want to lay out the thinking behind it to put it in your child's court. So now you're sitting on the floor, you're playing Uno, you're reading a book and you're gonna be like, what are you doing? And you just get to say in that even matter of fact tone, guys, you get to determine how this plays out, right? How this movie plays out. You have every right to fight and to be miserable your entire childhood.

You get to choose that. And I'm completely comfortable with you guys being miserable. Side note, you're going to have to get comfortable with that. Otherwise, your kids are going to manipulate you all the time. One of the greatest breakthroughs we had as parents, especially with Casey and with all the kids who came in our home, because we had 1,500 kids like this come in our home, so they got fights all the time, was getting comfortable with the fact that it's not my job to make other people happy in life.

And sometimes people have a choice to make, and they do choose to be miserable, right? They choose to be bored and they choose that. Okay. This is not talking about kids who are suffering with depression, right? And different things. That's different, but I want you to be comfortable. So guys, I'm comfortable with you guys being miserable. I'm no longer responsible for controlling everyone's moods around here. I just want you to know you do not have the right or power to make me miserable. That's an entire program in itself of how do you take back control of yourself. That's in the 30 days to calm of learning how to say like, I don't give you that power of me.

You don't get to make me miserable. I don't give you that power. So kids, if you're going to squabble, you may not do it in my living room, in my kitchen, or anywhere I am. Now, you may go outside. You can go to the attic. You can even go down the street to the Henderson's house because they love irritating children. A little sarcasm. Leave that out. But not in my space. Otherwise, I promise I will be very loud next time you are watching your favorite TV show or next time you're sleeping on Saturday morning, next time you're playing your video games, I'm going to be loud. Or sometimes you know what you can do with your

spouse? Bicker in front of them. Did too. Did not. Did too. Did not. And they'll see how awful it sounds and irritate them. Listen, we want to give you guys lots of freedom. We want to go away on trips. We want to do fun things with you. But when you guys squabble like this, here's what it tells us. It tells us you're not mature enough to handle that freedom. So you're not mature enough for us to take you to fun places and do fun things with you. So I suppose you two have a choice to make. You can continue to be each other's puppets or see that whole puppet reference. We go through that in the program as you look at your child and say, why are you being your sister's puppet? Why are you your brother's puppet? Your child's going, I'm nobody's puppet. Well, you're completely his puppet because all he has to do is look at you

and you react to him. All he does is have to say something to you or walk by you and you react to him. You're giving your brother or your sister complete control over you. And so you're his puppet, right? So that's what that reference is. You can continue to be each other's puppets, or you can write a new ending to this movie. See, that's entirely up to you. See, you can continue to be each other's puppets. Or you can write a new ending to this movie. See, that's entirely up to you. See, you can continue to fight with each other and squabble. And you'll just be miserable your whole entire childhood. And that's okay with me if you want to do that.

Just, again, not where I am. But I have a couple other ideas. See, I think starting a little business would actually be a great idea. And you guys could earn some money. You could give to your favorite charity. You can use that money to buy some cool things, right, that you've wanted. And I'm glad to help you come up with some ideas. And you guys have big hearts.

So we could even come up with a family service project, feeding homeless people, maybe even volunteering at the animal shelter. There's all kinds of ways we could help people. But listen, I'm going to go get dinner ready. And if you want some help learning how to handle conflict, I'll help you guys. But I'm not going to fix and solve everything for you. See, that's up to you. So I suggest you guys think about your choices. And then you walk away and put the ball in their court. And see, when you can begin doing that, it's a really beautiful thing you've done because you've taught your kids lessons that most of us never learn until we're in our 40s. You've begun to meet the internal needs of both kids.

See, because that provoking child needs to use his brain. And so starting a little business, doing a service project, creating things, right, putting things back together. Letting your kids do adult things, by the way. Your strong will kids want to do adult things. I think I may have mentioned, had a dad write in, he said, well, you've freed us from the whole chore fights over chores because we let our child choose what he wants to do from chores. He's mowing the lawn at age nine. He's changing the oil in the car, right? Some of your kids like to cook. So you get that brain energy, use that to your advantage, teach your kids how to get their brain stimulation in positive ways, right? And doing that. And now you're using their big hearts. And when you do that, you're starting, look, you're starting to teach them how to have

healthy relationships with themselves and others. And with little kids, you're starting, look, you're starting to teach them how to have healthy relationships with themselves and others. And with little kids, you're going to have to be a little bit more hands-on and you're going to have to role play with them a little bit. And you're going to have to show them how to do that. We can show you how to get this done so that you can reduce the number of sibling fights. So it doesn't, so these, see these patterns repeat. And so you taking control of yourself is the first step. And then teaching. Look, sibling issues, some of it's a discipline issue, but discipline means to teach. Just saying, why can't you guys get along? You go to your room. That's not discipline. You're not teaching them. You're just separating them. You're just delaying them. You're delaying them from learning how to control themselves and learn how to handle difficult people. And the truth is that that's what marriage is. And that's what all of life is, is dealing with difficult people. And sibling issues, if you can look at it, change from the context of like,

oh, my kids are irritating. When will they ever stop? Why can't they too? Oh, this is an opportunity to teach them lifelong skills that they will use till the day they die so they can get along with the future spouse, get along with their kids in the future so they can get along with the future spouse, get along with their kids in the future so they can get along with their siblings, so they can get along with me, so they can get along with just everybody in their lives. This is an opportunity, so use it. Take advantage of the Christmas in July special. Look, you can go to therapy for all this stuff and it's fine, but you're going to spend thousands of dollars and they're not going to give you anything practical to do, right? Just say, well, you need to be firm and do the consequences and set your expectations. Well, you already know to do that. We want to teach you how to go deeper.

You want to get your kids off of screens, off that reliance. You're going to have to go a little bit deeper, right, than just going all Amish and shutting off electricity in your house, which is a fine option. I don't have a problem with that, but you're going to have to replace the needs that are being met when your kids are squabbling and fighting with each other. You have to replace those with positive ones. Your kids are getting needs met when they're on their screens. You're going to have to figure out what those needs are and meet them in positive, different ways, and we can show you how to do that. So reach out to us. Email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, CelebrateCalm.com. Tell them about your family. We will consult. We will get back to you with ideas, with suggestions, with recommendations, with ideas, and we'll help your family. I encourage

you, if you have the CDs, the programs, listen to them, share them, have your kids listen to them over the summer. Have them listen to Casey's one on Straight Talk for Kids because he teaches kids how to control their own emotions and how to deal with irritating people. It's really cool. Anyway, if we can help you, let us know. We know it's a struggle out there. We appreciate you listening to us. And if we can help you, let us know. It's what we live for. Love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.